Ender

A little while ago there was a blog post floating around Facebook (which I now cannot find) with a whole “judge not lest ye be judged” theme of rehoming ones companion dog. It was a nice post, actually, talking about how sometimes life’s circumstances cause tectonic shifts in personal circumstances that force people to make decisions they might otherwise not make. Truth – life sometimes sucks and we are made to do things that in turn also suck.

The post then went on to talk about people who give up their sport dogs due to injury or age, citing some sappy rhetoric about how the dog “knows” it can’t compete anymore and is heartbroken at being left behind, and it’s “kinder” to rehome the dog with someone who can give the dog lots of love and long walks on the beach or some such thing, and the dog will be better off for it … but don’t judge the competitor who sloughed off that useless canine, because they are doing it “for the dog.”

That’s when I started to get really, really irritated.

I do not understand this concept of giving up your friend because he’s no longer useful to your hobby. Neither does almost-15 year old, can’t do agility anymore and has some difficulty getting on and off the porch sometimes, Tweed.

This blog post was quite timely for me, because two weeks ago, I rehomed Ender.

It was a long time coming, but it was also a decisive, “moment in time” decision where I simply sat down at my desk one morning over coffee and composed a rehoming post on a local Italian Greyhound forum I would sometimes frequent. I tried to be honest – I talked about his good points, and I also outlined the things about him that drove me ’round the bend. I stressed that I was giving him up because I did not like living with him, and that I’d made a mistake in acquiring him, and that it was important to me that he went to a home that KNEW they liked Italian Greyhounds, and not someone like me, who just thought they might like Italian Greyhounds. I did not want him passed around even more than he already had been (six homes in 3 years before mine!), and that if ever it did not work out in his new home, he could – AND WOULD – come back to me.

I expected to be judged. I deserved to be judged. And I was.

And that’s okay, because rehoming ones dog when it is not a life-or-death situation is an activity that should be weighed against its own morality. I judged MYSELF when I made this decision; I made a choice about what I wanted to live with and what I didn’t want to put up with, and Ender came out on the bottom. He wasn’t killing me, or ruining my life. I just didn’t like him very much, and I chose a life that did not include him. That’s not very nice of me, when you get right down to it. I rehomed Ender for me, not for Ender.

Of course, he did drive me BATTY. I would find myself tensing up every evening listening to the ritualistic sounds of Ender getting out of my bed after his post-dinner nap; uncovering himself from my quilt, shaking his tags, thumping from the bed to the chair, the chair to the floor, clickety clicking across the laminate into the living room, and then standing behind my chair and doing his front-feet-off-the-floor hop and saying “arrlwhorlllawwr” in his grumbly way, asking to go outside to pee. Repeat a minimum of 4 times between dinner at 7PM and bed time around 10PM. Why the fuck can’t he just NOT PEE 400 times before bed, like every other god damn dog in the house?

Constantly screaming “ENDERENDERENDER!!” whenever I was out with the dogs, because he was always disappearing from sight. Stomping up the road where I knew I’d find him, waiting to yodel his turkey alarm call at people out for an evening stroll, with or without their dogs. Getting progressively angrier as he ignored me until he spied me, and would then shoot back onto the acreage with a facial expression indicating sheer terror at my advance. Just stop doing it then, stay on the fucking acreage like everyone else, you stupid skinny asshole!

“I hate this one” my landlord would tell me, pointing at Ender.

Never mind the fact that I have to replace the laminate in my bedroom now, because he ruined it by constantly pissing on it. I won’t even talk about how I discovered the mysterious pee smell in my living room was Ender sneak-pissing ON MY GOD DAMN TV STAND, finding pools of stagnant and dried urine under my stereo and PVR. The jumping up and rebounding off my ass and the small of my back while I was preparing every dog meal, ever. Couldn’t even cuddle the damn dog, because he was all elbows and legs and would kick me in the face or decide he’d had enough and spring off my body using my neck or torso as a flyball box. I. HATED. living with him.

So I found him a new home. They live nearby, they have another Italian Greyhound and they – get this – get out of bed every morning at 3AM to take their other IG out to pee on the porch, because she can’t (although I suspect it’s more like WON’T) hold it all night long. They feed raw. They loved Ender on sight, and wanted him right away. So the next evening, I drove Ender and all his pajamas, jackets, belly bands and maxi pads, and favourite blankets over to their house.

He wouldn’t get out of the car when we got there. And when I tried to hand him over to his new dad, he tried to run back to me in mid air. And I sobbed all the way home, and well into the evening. Although they live only 10 minutes away, just 15 minutes after I got home Ender’s new dad sent me a text that had photos of Ender playing with their Lab, and chewing happily on a pork bone I’d sent along with him.

“Just because he didn’t like the moment of change, doesn’t mean the change isn’t a good one,” a friend of mine told me when I described how hard it was to hand him off to someone else.

Ender will be just fine. And so will I. I feel guilty, but not because I rehomed him – I feel guilty because after the initial sadness, all I feel is relief. I have not missed him at all. I did a selfish thing. I don’t know if Ender knew I didn’t like him; dogs are pretty intuitive, so maybe on some level he did, though I tried hard to like him all the time and to demonstrate a fondness for him. I cuddled and patted him regularly, I gave him the best food and veterinary care I could (he certainly was in MUCH better shape when he left me than when he came to me) and I played with him and taught him new tricks and treated him very well. But I also found myself negotiating with myself all the time – today I will acquire the wisdom to accept the things I cannot change about Ender; I will not get angry with him, I will not have expectations of him that exceed his capabilities. I will be a better dog owner. And then I would come home to my jackets all on the floor with the pockets chewed up (because maybe cookies once upon a time in there) and chunks of cat litter and cat poop on the floor from his mid day snack (and once, chunks of cat poop IN MY SHEETS when he decided he wanted to dine in bed that day) because he had no respect for baby gates, and I’d lose my resolve and seethe with hatred for the 17lbs of insidious evil I’d welcomed into my home. I hated him for how he made me feel, and I hated myself for feeling that way, and it was all because I just couldn’t accept Ender for who he was. There is nothing about it that feels good.

Except now I feel good. In the last two weeks I have not found a single sneaky pee in my bedroom or up the the back of my easy chair. The cat litter box remains unmolested. I’m not throwing soiled belly bands into the washing machine with unnecessary force. I’m not burbling with tension on the verge of anger as my van pulls up in front of my house after work. And I am enjoying time outdoors with the dogs again. And there is a marked change in the happiness level of the other dogs in the house. At our first agility practice after Ender left, Spring’s old enthusiasm returned and she was a ROCKET, bootin’ around the course at warp speed. She’s been mopey at practice for a year or so, to the point where I’d almost decided not to enter her in Regionals this June.

She’s playing with Winter again, an activity that had all but ceased over the last year, presumably because Ender would get in there and piss them both off (none of my dogs liked playing with Ender).

The Littles’ play sessions are longer and more joyful, because there is no Ender to get in the middle of them and ruin their fun.

Everyone in the house is a just a helluva lot more relaxed.

But make no mistake – I didn’t do it for them. I didn’t even realize that they were unhappy(ish) with Ender in the house, though it’s a nice side effect of him being gone. I rehomed Ender for me. And as someone who has made a lifetime’s work of advocating for lifetime commitment to ones four legged companions, I can’t pretend I gave Ender away for any reason other than I didn’t want to be his human. And you can judge me for it, it’s okay. Because I don’t think that anyone who passes a dog on to another home should feel anything other than badly about what they’ve done. I’d be a much shittier person if I thought I deserved less than judgment.

Good bye Ender.

In other news…

I have started training Fae in agility, with limited success. She is an up-and-down temperament – gleefully joyful one moment, paranoid and fearful the next. She develops random phobias of a tunnel entrance or a jump directional in the middle of a little sequence. It’s pretty frustrating. So The Sadist said “find a toy she really likes and work on building her drive for that toy.”

I’ve been experimenting with different toys with Fae.

Meh

But have found only one thing she consistently likes. Which is a clump of grassy mud.

WHEEEE!

Because she’s contrary like that. It’s good thing she is so damn adorable!

This morning she tried to crawl up to my chin do her morning greeting (which involves biting me in the nose and scratching at my ears) but had somehow gotten herself between the duvet and the duvet cover, and she had a panic attack until I worked out how to free her. She is a dearly odd little critter (who incidentally has figured out housebreaking all of a sudden, and is 100% reliable in the house now).

This insect makes me ANGRY!

For those of you wondering, Ancient Gemma Bean is still alive and kicking.

I don’t know how much longer she will be around though … Sometimes I wonder how much of a life she really has – she is either eating, sleeping, or scratching/chewing and crying about it. We are trying her on prednisone now, since clearly her itchies are not allergy-related. If this doesn’t help her, I’m not sure what else will, and I think it might be kinder to let her go.

The rest of the gang is doing great, although Wootie seems to feel he has some kind of dietary deficiency that requires him to consume large quantities of dirt, which leaves him resembling a hipster with an ironic mud goatee.

TWooie is still fat, and still rotten to the core ;-)

Rhumba is still with me :( I put an adoption ad for her on the “Women Seeking Women” section of Craigslist, but it got flagged off in a matter of minutes. Some people have NO sense of humour at all. Harumph. She is still looking for a ladies-only home, and she really is such a fun, cool little dog.

Still crazy:

Tweed’s doing GREAT. He has started sleeping in “old dog positions” lately, which distresses me, but he still plays fetch twice a day, and chases Dexter all over the damn joint at top speed. I don’t know anyone else with a 15 year old dog that is this spry! Doesn’t look a day over 10 to me.

Piper refused to pose for any photos, because she only wanted to dance around behind me with a stuffie in her mouth. But after years of promises, I finally came through and got her 5 baby Indian Runner Ducks.

When they are big enough, she can work them to her heart’s content. Next I need to set up the duck pen … anyone want to come help me move the duck house to its new location? It’s really fuckin’ heavy!

I’m loving the new camera lens … if only the weather would be more cooperative so I could take more photos!

But now I am on the hunt to purchase a second hand Canon 7D. Anyone got one for sale?

They fight dirty (or they’re just dirty because of all the rain and mud).

And their weapon of choice?

URINE.

doG DAMN but I’m having a helluva time housebreaking Fae. The Italian Greyhounds, at least, use the potty pads. I hate the potty pads, but can live with them. And Fae knows what potty pads are for as she will use them at work, mostly … but she also pees on dog beds. At home, she has ruined one area rug in the bedroom, where she prefers to stealth pee. When I let her out to pee with the other dogs, she stands on the porch and stares at nothing until everyone comes back inside. If I go out with her, she also stands around staring at nothing until I give up and bring her back inside.

I have to actually put her on a leash and walk her up the road to get her to pee, but I can’t do that all the time – and it doesn’t always work. Sometimes she will walk up and down the road forever and not pee, then pee in my bedroom. I praise her like crazy when she does go, and she – I swear to doG – gives me a dirty look when I do.

But twice in the last 10 days she has climbed up onto my bed and peed on my quilt! And always she does this when I go to brush my teeth and stuff – she’ll pee on the bed and then go lie down a couple feet away from it. I usually find it by kneeling in it as I climb into bed.

She’s cute and I love her like mental, but the bed peeing … it makes. Me want. to rip out her bladder and shove it up her ass.

What gives man? Any brilliant ideas?

You were probably wondering who Tiny Dog #4 is in that photo. That’s Rhumba. Rhumba has been living at my work since October, and nobody wants to adopt her. She’s a special little creature with some funny quirks (skeptical of strangers, downright suspicious of men, strangers or not, and kinda bitchy/fighty with other dogs when she gets her back up) but you’d think there’d be a ladies only family out there somewhere who would want to love her :(

She stays in reception, not the kennels, but she’s been there for so long she thinks the shelter is her home, and that breaks my heart. So I went and got her on my day off and brought her home, and I think I’ll just bring her home in the evenings for a while. It gives me a chance to see what she’s like outside of a shelter setting / in a house (so far so good – uses the pee pads if she really needs to go, sleeps quietly on my bed at night without being disruptive, respects the cats, and learned really quickly how to line up for popcorn while The Food Lady watches a movie) and maybe help her overall confidence.

TWooie didn’t even get angry about having another dog in the house. I don’t know if it’s because he’s finally given up on caring about foster dogs, or if she’s too small to bother with, but he hasn’t made ugly face or growled or lunged in her direction once. They shared the bed with me last night, no fighting!

He did, however, get back at me by rolling in something vile this afternoon.

Well f*ck you and all.

Brother Wootie is still going gangbusters, albeit on three legs. For a while I thought about not even doing the surgery, because he was walking without a limp almost at all and didn’t appear to be in any significant pain, and Dr.B did say “doing nothing” was a not unheard of option. Not because I don’t want to spend the money on Noodles, but because he is going to be the world’s shittiest patient. And he’s a screamer when he hurts too. But then about a week ago he tweaked his knee and has been tripodding ever since. I am now sort of trying to stall until the weather gets a bit better, as I know that trying to rehab in the dark and rain sucks.

Ugh. You ever have those mornings where you wake up and want to slap the happy Good Morning! grin off of every one of your damn tail wagging dogs? I woke up like that today. They’re all bouncing around yelling “It’s Saturday! It’s light outside! Let’s go for a walk!” and I’m all surly, hair akimbo, snarling “What the f*ck are you so happy about, you stupid shits?” I apparently forgot to latch Winter’s crate last night so he was leaping on and off the bed with inordinate enthusiasm and the only reason I got up was because my fantasy of giving him a good swift kick when he was in mid flight, and imagining him crashing through the bedroom wall and then the exterior house wall, and then bouncing and rolling for like a mile through the pasture on every rock and sharp thing out there from the force of my anti-morning rage, was becoming a little too satisfying.

Then whilst I am trudging along the back of the property with a scowl on my face so serious it’s actually giving me a headache, the stupid mutts take off after Imaginary Creature and the bastards actually swim the ditch and are racing through the blueberry fields, all having simultaneously gone deaf. I finally convince them all to come back by using my Come To Jesus Voice and we get up to where the property meets the public dykes and for the first time in as long as I can remember, we encounter Another Dog. Fortunately I manage to football tackle TWooie and pin him in the mud, but the rest of them go flying down the dyke to jump all over the dog’s owner and bark and yodel (ENDER) ferociously at the dog itself, some big houndy looking thing who totally takes it in stride. On a normal day, I would just continue laying on top of TWooie, apologize to the dog owner and make a joke.

But I’m GROUCHY today so I holler at my dogs to F*CK OFF AND LEAVE IT and of course every single one of them forgets they ever learned anything, ever, and continue to smear mud and coyote poop and rabbit guts or whatever the hell else is on their feet all over the lady and bark in her dog’s face. I finally haul TWooie to his feet and stomp back in the direction of our property (hunched over like Quasimodo because TWooie is short and I’ve got him by the collar, because OF COURSE I neglected to bring the Emergency Bad Dog Needs A Lesson Leash), the rest of the pack sort of meandering in my direction, reluctant to leave their new best friends, and continuing to ignore me swearing and yelling at them. I get about 50 feet down the path on my property when the lady appears with her dog, striding right at me. And because today I am the Biggest Asshole in the Whole Entire Universe, I actually said to her:

“THIS IS PRIVATE PROPERTY.”

(WTF is wrong with me? Who SAYS that??)

She blinks at me for a moment and says “I’m just trying to help.” And I turn into SATAN and reply “You keep coming is not helping.” Which is true, in all fairness, because if she had stopped at the property line and turned back, my dogs would have eventually left her alone and come back to me. But because today is Food Lady Super Bitch day, it comes out all snarly and she throws up her hands and turns and walks away.

I’m such a jerk. Really, I need one of those medi-alert bracelets that says “Requires Strong Coffee, STAT” to absolve me of my assholiness. So if you’re reading this and you know the lady, or you ARE the lady – gawd, I’m sorry for being such a douche this morning.

Bah. Stupid today. I can’t believe I shit all over that poor woman.

Kind of like this heron is shitting all over everything.

Wouldn’t that have been a pretty photo without the truckload of poop shooting out of its ass like an AIM-9 Sidewinder? It’s so tack clear, in focus, nicely blurred background…

Tack clear. IN FOCUS. WTF, how did I manage that with my infamous limpdick F4 with the dying motor?

I didn’t. I took it with my brand new F2.8 70-200mm USM ii.

(!!!!!)

I took these at about 4PM yesterday, shortly before it started getting dark, with only a hit of sunshine in the sky because it was mostly cloudy. And they were in focus!

I was shooting in MANUAL, adjusting exposure and metering on the fly!

From across the pasture!

My dogs are beautiful through the lens again! I can see their EYES!

Addy’s not even funny looking in this photo!

I don’t even hate Ender in this one!

It’s like discovering photography all over again. It’s amazing.

It all came to be when a blog reader – whom I will not “out” because I didn’t ask this person if I could or not – contacted me and said they’d had some good fortune this year and after reading about how all my saved pennies for a new lens would be going to the Wootie’s doG Damned Knee fund wanted to do something nice, so bought me the lens I could not afford. It is one of the single most amazing things that has ever happened to me, and I am beyond humbled and grateful. I still kind of can’t believe it, even when it’s in my hot little hands and I’m shooting with it.

Sometimes the people in the universe are magical. Let us all give thanks for that, just for a moment.

There is no way I can ever repay this person for their amazing generosity, but I am a big believer in putting kindness back out into the ether, so as my way of paying it forward (and also atoning for being a giant asshole to the random dog owner this morning) I am going to offer a free photo shoot to the first THREE dog owning readers (local only – ie the Lower Mainland) who contact me, who have dogs over 10 years of age. Because everyone with an old dog deserves to have nice photos of their aging best friend, but aging best friends can be expensive best friends, so paying for photo shoots can be tough to justify. So if you have a senior dog, and you’re in the Lower Mainland, and you are one of the first three people to contact me, I will photograph your dog(s) for free sometime in the next couple of months.

:)

Also, I’ll give you Ender!

What?

Now, if someone could just get Wootie away from his Guard TWooie, we’ll get to work fixing that knee.

Nowhere, that’s where. I have too many damn dogs to be able to afford to go anywhere!

Haha. I stole your freedom and ABSORBED IT INTO MY SOUL.

F*cking Ender.

I am on “staycation” this week, having un-entwined myself from my all-encompassing job for 9 glorious days. Except for like 6 texts from staff and a brief visit to work yesterday (gah). It’s hard to be the boss of everything sometimes. Although I am not the boss of this:

This itty bitty she-demon is the bossiest thing on the planet (except the Sadist )! Meal time? Demands food with ear-splitting shrieks. Nail clipping time? CHOMP THE FOOD LADY! HARD! Am I trying to enjoy popcorn and a movie? Loooooong whiny sounds that are approximately 20 seconds in duration. Poke her with your socked foot to get her to shut up? CHOMP THE FOOD LADY! HARD! Gemma is bad ass. I think she scared the “terminal cancer” right out of her body, as it’s been nearly a year since I brought her home to “make her comfortable for a few weeks, feed her a cheeseburger and send her to Heaven.”

I am fairly confident that Heaven is not where she is headed.

It’s true that the smaller the dog, the bigger the attitude. Take, for example, this:

Cute right? (Heart melty, kick yourself in the teeth dreamy, head over heels in love with smushable adorableness, try to adopt her over my cold dead body and I’ll haunt you with everything I got, if you prefer).

But also, The Devil.

Bring it, bitches.

She’ll take on all comers with fight left over to kill one of my slippers. With gusto. She’s absolutely hilarious! She wants to Kill All The Things, but not in the terrier way where a black and white dog *coughWINTERcough* kills your baby chicken that was stupid enough to squeeze through the fence, but in that I DECLARE THIS SOCK MINE IN THE NAME OF TINYDOG AND I WILL SHAKE THE LIFE OUT OF IT IF I PLEASE kind of way. Last year I made a flirt pole out of a lunge whip and a holey roller ball and none of my dogs maintained any kind of sustained interest in it for more than a couple of minutes. They all just eyeballed the lunge line up to my hand, worked out I was f*cking with them, and were all “if you don’t want us to actually have it, we won’t bother chasing it then.” Stupid Einsteins, my pack of dogs.

But Fae made the flirt pole her bitch. She’ll run that thing down to the ends of the earth and when she catches it, it’s on! She growls and snarls and tugs and whips her head from side to side so hard I think her brains are going to fling out of her ears and go splat! against the fence. She’s HILARIOUS.

(On like night three of her being with me, she busted out of her crate in the night (the door is broken, she’s not The Hulk!) and climbed up into bed with me, and that’s where I found her in the morning, with her chin resting between my neck and shoulder while she spooned my back, snoring gently into my ear. *swoon* And yes, this is where she has slept ever since. Shut up.)

I tried to get photos of her playing with the flirt pole, but my zoom lens is all but useless at this point, refusing to focus and just generally undermining my attempts to photograph anything. I’m getting about 1 out of 10 shots in focus, and that seems to be mainly luck. It’s utterly useless in anything other than the bright sun too. So it’s a little more challenging to get blog fodder for you all these grey wintery days. The majority of my photos are only turning out if my subject happens to be standing still.

And posing gracefully, a la me?

Stupid zoom lens makes me crazy.

A la Dexter.

Makes me crazier when I hear/read stuff like “you don’t need expensive equipment to get amazing photos.” Don’t believe it. Photographers don’t drop thousands of dollars on gear because they have all this extra money they don’t know what to spend on. Bah. The zoom lens I wish to replace mine with is $2200.00. Screw you, Canon!!!!

So until I figure out a complicated scheme to bilk some old person out of their fortune, I’ll have to just keep grumbling on with my lip dick telephoto lens and hoping to land a shot now and then.

Do I hear a baby chicken begging to be eaten? But only with my left ear, because my right one is listening for the Food Lady who is going to kick ten kinds of holy hell out of me for eating a baby chicken. I’d better just really still and pose for the camera.

Or better yet, appease the huffing and puffing Two Legger by posing with food on my schnoz.

I am NOT posing with food on my face. And f*ck you very much for suggesting it.

Ah TWooie, my little ray of sunshine.

He and his slightly less FAT brother Wootie are going to be 9 years old next week(ish). Nine! I have been prattling on about my dogs for almost nine freaking’ years! How are you all not tired of listening to me yet?

And Miss Piper, the Ageless, is going to be 12 around the same time. 12. Gah.

I thought *I* was the ageless dog?

Well you are, Tweed. Although gravity seems to be winning the war against your mouth there.

He is doing remarkably well for a 14.5 year old dog, I think. I’m not entirely certain, as I have never before owned a 14.5 year old dog before. But he still plays ball every day, even if he has to kind of put on the brakes a bit prematurely, as otherwise he is prone to running right past it, because he can’t stop or corner like he used to. His eyesight is still fantastic and he can still hear me most of the time. For a while I thought he was practicing ‘selective deafness’ – you know, that privilege of ornery children and the very aged – but it seems that he can hear me most of the time just fine. Sometimes, maybe in certain registers, or where there is lots of extraneous noise, or if he is concentrating on something else and/or sleepy, he seems to miss what I am saying … but for the most part, you wouldn’t ever guess he was going on 15. He hasn’t even greyed at all. The only real difference I have noticed is that at paw wiping time, he can’t seem to coordinate standing on three legs if I lift up a back foot. He’s okay with the front ones, but if I lift up a hind paw the whole back end just seems to give up and decide to sit down, often to the surprise and irritation of the front end. His back end is still strong, it just doesn’t always talk to his brain apparently.

But hey, at least he’s GOT a brain. Just sayin’.

Just kiddin’. When it comes to paw wiping time (can you tell that wiping muddy feet is a consuming part of my life right now? I only wipe 44 paws at least three times a day, so go ahead, call me obsessive compulsive!) he is brilliant. He lifts them for me, without being asked, in order of paws needing wiping. How wicked smart is my Big Black Beast? Of course, he also hugs my REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR every morning whilst I am blow drying my hair, but I hear genius is also quirky.

It’s Day Three of Staycation 2014 and I am going to go laze around and do nothing for a while. Maybe admire my dogs some more. I am sure your dogs are cool and everything, but Spring has 3 extra legs and a spare tail, and Winter is shaped like one of those bi-articulated transit vehicles, so ….

I didn’t pull out a big chunk of Dexter’s ruff whilst chasing him around the property. Nope.

I didn’t pull back your fitted sheet on your bed and tear apart your memory foam mattress cover while you were at work. Nuh uh.

What do you mean “Who peed on the area rug 3 feet from the pee pads?” Why are you asking me?

I dunno who put a big nose smudge on your camera lens, so get outta my face.

Hey everyone! The Food Lady wants to know who has been making Sock Nests out of her laundry while she is gone every day. Anyone got any ideas?

Thank doG for Zylkene … Winter’s anxiety has been kicking itself into high gear for the last month or so, so back on the Zylkene he goes.

But who brought home an itty bitty faux border collie when she didn’t want another dog and now thinks you’d have to pry her from my cold dead hands??

Oh wait … that was me.

How freaking cute is this? Fae (because she’s a Pixie, one of the fae folk for sure) is about 9 months old, and weighs 10.5 lbs. She looks like one of my dogs might if I’d accidentally tossed one in a hot wash and then the dryer. HOW IS THIS MUCH ADORABLENESS POSSIBLE???

She is obedient, housebroken, crate trained, and snuggly as a teeny weeny fleece blankie. Oh and she’s feisty too!

STUPID CUTENESS! I HATE YOU!

She is learning to play fetch and likes it!

And she is fearless – she’ll take on anyone. Even hillbilly teeth!

Gah. I hate myself! Because even I, adopter of more dogs than Addy digs holes, knows when to stop. I know I don’t want any more dogs. EXCEPT I WANT THIS ONE!!

She’s just too much. TOO MUCH! ALL THE EVERYTHING!

Big fat le sigh. I’me getting her spayed next week and then she’ll have to find another home. After which I will throw myself across my bed (sans brand new memory foam mattress cover), tuck my cold, sockless feet (which have just stepped in pee on the area rug) up beneath me and sob myself to sleep (while tenderly touching the bruise on my eyebrow bone).

Why do I even have dogs again??

Oh right, because this:

and this:

and this (though the lipstick is a bit off-putting):

And of course, this:

It’s Adopt A Shelter Dog Month. Adopt a dog and bring some furry four legged joy into your life!

TWooie went out hinting* rabbits yesterday (*not a typo: he does not “hunt” so much as he races through the bush barking like he saw something, when we all know he saw nothing at all) and came back like this:

“This,” in case it is not clear, is his leg stuck through his martingale collar. (And in the background, his siblings are laughing at him). I have no idea how he gets himself into predicaments like this.

Pssst … wanna know a secret? Come closer … it’s cuz he’s DUMB.

Well Wootie, I wouldn’t be flappin’ my yap about dumb, if I were you. You are not exactly the pictorial dictionary definition of poise yourself, Pumpkin.

Who sits like that? And who drools mud down their chest hair?

Ooh! OOH! I know, I know!

(^in process of swallowing a walrus, rhinoceros or other really big creature that would require the ability to unhinge his jaw)

In honour of Talk Like A Pirate Day, Dexter wants to tell you the bone-chilling tale of Blacktongue. It’s a story used by parents* the world over to frighten their children**

(*parents= dog owners. **Children = BAD DIGGING DOGS).

It goes like this:

If you insist on digging ankle sized holes in the yard with your itty bitty little feet and pointy little teeth

Your tongue will TURN BLACK AND STAY THAT WAY!

What?

The end.

Is that really for true?

Oh bless Tweed. He was much sharper before age robbed him of his wisdom.

Not that the young ‘uns are all that smart either. If the younger generation were smarter than their elders, then this would not have happened:

Right about now you’re scratching your head and saying in your best Marty Hart voice “I just want you to stop posting odd shit.”

Odd shit indeed. As part of Weird Week, these five sibling adolescent squirrels fell out of the nest like this … with their tails knotted, matted and tangled together. The Hydra of Squirrels, if you will. SCATTER THIS, BITCH!

An ACO tried to solve the Chinese Squirrel Puzzle in the field but didn’t have enough hands. Or gloves. Squirrels bite like fury. So he brought them to us at work.

Where we all grabbed a squirrel and let the Health Tech do her thang.

Free at last, free at last. Oh lordy, we’re free at last!

Took a good 20 minutes. My job is so WEIRD.

Ender is weird too. He looks like someone lit a firecracker under Mr. Burns.